Three Kids? You Showoffs.

I saw this over the weekend, Three Kids? You Showoffs. As my wife and I contemplate adding to our brood, and coming from a family of three kids, I don't really consider it showing off.

My family is talking about it in part because our children make us happy (even when driving us mad) and at least from my point of view, I would like another shot at having a boy (way too much estrogen in the household--even the dog is a girl). But I wouldn't consider having a third child as showing off our wealth (as if we had some), but rather simply expanding our happiness.

The Two Income Trap

Todd Zywicki looks at the "two-income trap" and to a certain extent debunks the premise of the commonly accepted theory that increases in mortgage costs drives the engine that creates a two-income household, which in turn actually makes the two income household less economically stable than a single income family. Zwicki notes that it is the tax burden, not the increased mortgage and childcare costs associated with a two income family that causes the greatest financial instability.

To a certain extent, my wife and I are in a similar situation. She is returning to the workforce full time at a time when I am looking for new legal work. Part of the reason is poor decision making regarding our finances previously and the attendant consequences of those decisions.

I do worry about the additional tax burden, but there are other reasons, beyond the simply financial, that my wife is returning to work. Part of the reason is my aversion (at my age and with my family) to working at a big time law firm where new associates are expected to work 65-70 hours a week and my desire to avoid 1.5 hour commute (one way) to get to work every day. That drives my range of employment options.

But another part is the desire of my wife to actually return to work despite the emotional toll it will place on her. While part of my wife's income will go to paying down out debts faster than had we just relied on my salary, a large portion of it will be saved for education and family expenses. We calculated that it would be better in terms of interest to start saving for our daughters' collegiate education now than if we wait three years until our youngest is in school. Smaller savings payments now translate to much bigger payoffs in the end.

What is ironic is that my wife, whose job will likely be with the University System of Maryland, will probably have even better benefits that I currently have, at least in terms of payroll deductions, that it may be cheaper for our entire family to be on her health plan, thus freeing up me to take a few risks in terms of employment that we otherwise would not be able to take if I had to keep my job for the health coverage.

The School Supply Tax

This weekend, my wife and I took our girls to Target to buy school supplies for my oldest daughter. The Peanut is starting Kindergarten this year and we dutifully took the school supply list (below) to buy the supplies. My wife had picked up the list from Peanut's school and I had not seen it until yesterday.

The longer I looked at the list, the madder I got. Here is the list:

1 black & white composition book
1 pack of yellow pencils
1 pack of colored pencils
1 pack of colored, washable, markers
1 zippered storage container (5" x 8")
1 24-pack of crayons (labeled with child's name)(preferably Crayola)
3 pocket folders (with prongs, 2 yellow and 1 green)
1 pair of child-size scissors (we prefer Fiskar brand-labeled with child's name)
6 large glue sticks
1 box of tissues
1 box of gallon-size ziploc bags
1 pack of stickers (seasonal or character)
4-6 pack of thin dry erase markers (we prefer Expo)

For boys only:
1 box of snack-size ziploc bags
1 bottle of hand sanitizer (not soap)
For girls only:
1 pack of sanitizing wipes
1 box of sandwich-size ziploc bags

All of this, in addition to a new backpack, a new lunchbox and clothes we have yet to buy. Now, I know, I didn't spend a lot of money on these items since Target and Wal-Mart sell all of these items for really cheap.

My beef comes with the items in italics above. More and more, the school supply lists are including materials for the teachers' use in class--supplies that in my mind should be provided by the schools. By providing these supplies for the school, we are paying another school tax--a tax we shouldn't have to pay and a tax that goes up every year and disproporionately affects parents with several children in the schools.

I realize that tissues and sanitizers help reduce the spread of colds and viruses and are thus valuable, arguably necessary, items (although by how much the spread of viruses and bacteria is reduced would be a wonderful study to conduct because I would argue not very much). I still don't know what the ziplocs are for right now, particularly the three different sizes, but I suppose I will find out. Dry erase markers clearly will not be for my daughter's use, since dry erase markers, unless used on a dry erase board, are quite permanent.

I pay a pretty penny in federal, state, and local taxes that support my local schools. I do so grudgingly and did so even when my kids are not in the schools. Why aren't the schools providing tissues, sanitizers and dry erase markers?

For parents with the means to buy supplies, we are expected to buy supplies. For children from families without means, these supplies are either provided free or at reduced cost (although just about everyone can find a quarter for a pack of crayons or pencils). Clearly the issue is not solely about money.

The trend of more and more parental input in supply matters is troubling. As school spending has skyrocketed over the past 30 years or so, it seems as though less and less is being provided by the schools. Parents are being asked to dig into their wallets for items that would reasonably be considered paid for through taxes. Why can't the school buy sanitizing wipes and tissues? Why aren't huge bottles of Purell not available in every classroom courtesy of the county (which would seem to have an interest in healthy kids)? Why can't the county supply dry erase markers? On that score, why does a teacher need 4-6 dry erase markers from every kid (call it 20 in a class)? What are 80-120 dry erase markers for any way?

My question is why do I and every other parent have to provide these supplies?

The answer, this school supply list is a scam, it is a "tax," a means of forcing parents to pay more for the public education system beyond the personal needs of their child and their already hefty tax payments. The school system gets the parents to buy "school supplies" so the system doesn't have to do the heavy lifting of determining what supplies are needed and how to pay for them. The school doesn't have to manage inventory, track useage rates, and all the other matters involved in supply provision and control. If schools need something or the teachers need something, they simply add it to the list of "school supplies" for each pupil and then "tax" each student to provide for the common "good." It doesn't matter to the schools, for there is a steady stream of new parents and new students each year to "tax."

The school supply tax is the perfect governmental scheme of passing responsibility onto the "tax payer" and shirking accountability for the use of the taxes.

Update (8/7/07, 3:16pm): In response to Kimberly's comments. As to the tissues, I too had tissues in my supplies, but they were for my use, not a "tax" levied upon each child. The school provided tissues in my elementary school, so there was no supply tax.

Thanks for shedding light on the ziploc bags. However, it still does not address why the school needs three different sizes and an entire box for each kid. My daughter has had a bag for her pre-school that she never lost in two years.

Kimberly mentions that she bought big bottles of Purell (or a similar product) herself. This is exactly the kind of expense that neither teachers nor the parents should have to bear. I hope that Kimberly claims these expenses on her tax return every year as unreimbursed employment expenses.

While teachers have a tax law out, parents do not. The school supply tax actually increases over time as teh supplies for classroom use actually expand during the child's elementary school education (although they tend to drop in middle and high school).

I know the outlay is not large--perhaps ten dollars for my family, but it is the principle of the whole matter. As school budgets have expanded, school provided supplies on what I would consider basics have actually declined. Furthermore, because these supplies are a tax levied at the beginning of each year, the schools, I am positive, have no data on useage. Does a school or a class really go through 120 dry erase markers in a year? Does it really use 20 bottles of hand sanitizer? What happens to any surplus supplies at the end of the year? There is no data and no accountability for this tax.

America's Hoarding Psychosis

Zach Wendling has a fantastic post about Clean Sweep, a Learning Channel show where people with "pack rat-itis" clean out their junk. Toward the end, Wendling writes:

This is reminiscent of some sort of psychological trick, like over-eating. Conventional wisdom tells us our bodies are hardwired to store up calories for when times are lean. Are we also programmed to hoard? I doubt it, or else our cathartic purges wouldn't feel so good. Andrew Postman wrote in Real Simple Magazine two years ago about clearing out his Brooklyn brownstone's basement. He concludes, "When you're accumulating, you can't imagine throwing stuff out; when you're throwing stuff out, you can't imagine how you accumulated."

I admit, my family has this problem, but for different items for different people.

My daughters have a toy problem. Well actually, my wife and I have a toy problem in that we have too many in the house--way, way too many. We need to pare down the toys in the house, build some better storage (I like to build things--it is cheaper than buying, I can customize and carpentry keeps me off the streets). Now, of course, my wife and I have bought the bulk of the girls' toys, but Christmas at my house is an obscene orgy of toys and games for the girls, courtesy of my mother in law, for whom our girls are her only grandchildren. My parents (thankfully) are much more pragmatic--buying clothese for girls who are sprouting like weeds. That is not to say my parents don't buy toys, they do, just not as much.

My problem is two fold--books and music. I love to read and tend to buy books as well as check them out of the library. The problem is, of course, that once bought, my books rarely leave our house. Now, I have bought and built bookshelves, which now overflow with the many tomes I have purchased in some 25+ years of book buying (I bought books with my soccer refereeing money--I was a total geek!!). I have promised my wife that I will go through the roughtly 15 boxes of books we have in storage and donate them to the local library. But that is a promise I made some three years ago when we moved to our current home and well it hasn't happened.

When it comes to music, I am, I suppose, something of a 20th Century Luddite--I like CDs. I rarely download music and much prefer to buy an entire CD. I know that I could download an full CD for about the same price as a physical disk, but there is something about having a disk to touch that makes me happy. My disk collection is not nearly as large as my book collection and much smaller thanks to a theft of a house during college. During my Navy years, I would buy between two and four CD's every pay period. I had accumulated nearly 300 CDs during a four year enlistment and all of them were stolen when I was in college, a heart breaking loss not completely covered by a renter's insurance policy.

My wife's problem is clothes. Now I know that sounds sexist, but she will readily admit that she finds it difficult to part with clothing, even though I argue that our giving away of clothes is the most immediate charitable contribution we give. In the past three years, I have convince her to give away hundreds of articles of clothing and we still don't have room for her apparel. Our closet is stuffed, her dresser is exploding and she has now commandeered a drawer in my dresser. To be frank, this could very well be genetic since her mother at one point occupied ever closet in her not small house--this was after my father in law passed away. But one very large tax bill later, my mother in law discovered the benefit of charitable giving and gone was her oversized wardrobe.

My family is not atypical of our friends. We all have far too much "stuff" for our homes. My wife and I have a storage crises, but we are pretty much average among our friends. We have parted with clothing, I much more easily than my wife, and some household goods. But the above items continue to plague us.

The funny thing is that we know about our problem, even laugh at the victims on Clean Sweep, but tell ourselves we are not nearly as bad. But in reality, we are. It is just that we have deluded ourselves in to believing that because we are better with storage that we are not nearly as possession driven as we really are.

Are we the exception to the rule or the rule itself? Does America suffer this hoarding psychosis? I tend to think yes.